The relationship between Atlas and Jira explained

[#1]

👋 Hey there. So you’ve landed in Atlas 

And now you’re wondering, how does it work with Jira? Where’s the integration?

How do I link an Atlas project to my Jira issues?

Can I automate my status updates based on Jira data?

Can I use my Atlas goals in Jira?

Jira Software: Communication within your team, Atlas: Communication outside your team.

Jira Software is an issue tracking tool, helping you see what your team is working on right down to the nitty-gritty details. In contrast, Atlas enables communication between teams, giving other teams and stakeholders a high-level summary view of how your projects or goals are tracking.

So, Jira helps you work within your immediate team. Atlas helps you communicate outside your team, across teams of teams at the right level of granularity - a project or an overarching outcome. Due to the different audiences within these two tools, the type of updates you share needs to be tailored to their proximity to the work. 

For example, if you’re launching a new mobile app, do your stakeholders really need to know all the tasks that your team completed in the last week? Or do they simply need to know that the mobile app is on track to being delivered by the targeted due date, and here are the main highlights, risks and next steps?

✨ But first, let’s align on some common vocab

An Atlas Project is not the same as a Jira Project.

In Atlas, projects represent a stream of work being completed, that has an owner, a targeted completion date and an overall status. The recommended size for a project is more than 2 people working on it for more than 2 weeks. This may commonly map to a Jira epic or an initiative.

In Jira, projects often represent a space for all of a team’s work, represented in roadmap, board and backlog views.

While the project concept is different between Atlas and Jira, you can easily create and link an Atlas project directly from your epics or initiatives in Jira using the Atlas for Jira app (keep reading!).

Want to automate reports from Jira? Ask yourself if all details within your team are relevant to those outside your team.

We understand the appeal of an end-to-end reporting solution, where statistics around progress %, story points and issues completed are pulled from Jira, but we urge you to think about the value of this in practice. Remember, the people following your Atlas projects are very different from those in your Jira boards. Showing dashboards statistics may be visually alluring, but it doesn’t have the same insight and clarity as a short, curated update (read more about why we don’t believe in automated status reports).

This also means there isn’t the double handling our customers initially expect. Since the content shared is different, the extent to which you need to keep things aligned may just be as simple as dates and statuses.

The right level of Jira detail: In context.

Does this mean we don’t have any integration to Jira? Of course not!

We acknowledge there are scenarios where a tighter relationship is required between Jira and Atlas, particularly when it comes to planning & communication of in-progress work.

So, we have an Atlas for Jira Cloud integration, which should already be available to you. Simply hop on an Jira epic or initiative in the same site your Atlas workspace has been created on, and you’ll see a Status Updates field in the right panel and a Linked Goals button in the top of the issue.

This will enable you to link and sync critical information such as title, target dates, start dates, tags and goals between Jira Software issues and Atlas projects. It will also allow you to directly create and link work in Jira to Atlas goals. See more detail about how to use and manage the integration here.

We have also built ways for project owners to link their followers to more detail in Jira, if needed without necessarily syncing. Some other ways you can link Atlas and Jira together are:

Reference at the project level e.g. here is our detailed board if you are interested (project links)

Reference a specific issue that is a blocker/at risk in an update or comment (smart cards for single issue)

Embed roadmap for project context in project or goal about briefs

Embed Atlas in other products

You can also embed Atlas in other Atlassian products. Learn more about this here.

So, have we answered your questions on the relationship between Atlas and Jira?

Let us know what you think and if you have any more questions, feedback or challenges to our perspective on this topic!

For further discussion on this topic, join this forum on our Atlas Community: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Team-Central/The-relationship-between-Team-Central-and-Jira-explained/ba-p/1685737#M31

[Jimmy Seddon]

Thank you @Rachel Lin!  This is exactly what I was looking for to give to some of my fellow coworkers that are interested in exploring Team Central.

[Rob Horan]

This is a tremendous help, thank you!

[Arnd Layer]

I'm looking forward to those things coming.

Here is one observation I want to share.

I very much like what you are doing with links across the board with displaying them smartly and embedding content. It can make links pasted into a rich text field more useful instantly. But as a user, you have to copy the link you want to paste from somewhere else. So you first have to go to the source, click into the URL bar or right click a link and copy it. Then you can go back to your status report and paste it. In my opinion this is an acquired skill and needs a bit of planning, I would not expect from everyone in the target audience. There also is no guidance.

This is why I'd like to see pickers for relevant Jira information like projects, plans, releases, some reports or dashboards. Some of them would be related to the Team Central projects while others would belong to individual status updates.

Thank you for sharing those plans and engaging with all the feedback.

[Rob Horan]

Agreed, @Arnd Layer - this was my assumption going in to this product, that like all the others, there was built-in integration with the other tools.  Right now this just feels like a completely separate application that does some nice stuff with external links, but otherwise is completely cut off from the rest of the Atlassian ecosystem.

[Iain McCarthy]

Look forward to testing the Epic -> Team Central Project links! This could be very useful - especially if these links are a field searchable in JQL (hopefully this is the case... if not we'd love to request it). Ditto team members being a searchable group in JQL (currently we use Jira's groups for this but they are not nearly as accessible for staff). 

For what it's worth I'd agree with Rob & Arnd that this seems relatively isolated from the rest of the ecosystem to date. I don't share the view that stakeholder requirements are totally different in this context, for us there would be considerable overlap with our PMs being busy at both levels. 

We currently use Confluence's page property reports to roll up project posters and their statuses to a team hub. This is what I can imagine Team Central replacing, however most of the advantage here would come if there WAS connection to Jira epic and initiative progress directly onto these pages AND a deeper connection with Confluence than just pasting links.

Excited to see where this goes, thanks! 

[Dimitri Rupp]

Hi @Rachel Lin , thanks for this product introduction page. This gives a good understanding of how to work with Team Central and how to use it the best way.
I am working with it now and get some more experiences with it.

Talk to you soon,
Dimitri

[Mark Davies]

Interested. But cannot use until it ties to the Epics/Features already in play. I'd love to (as I'm sure others in my org would) a one-spot update home to consolidate activity.

[Robert Marten]

Thank you @Rachel Lin , very excited about the link with Jira Epics! I was curious how teams will link to Jira, will they potentially link to shared teams which are mostly used in Advanced Roadmaps? Thanks again!

[Rudy Holtkamp]

Hi @Rachel Lin ,

Like @Iain McCarthy said looking forward to the Jira > Team central integration. But you stated that you were integrating epics with Team central. But what if you use Advanced Roadmaps with a hierarchy where not epics represents projects but the level above (In our case business epics). Will the integration be customizable? 

[Lars Böhnke]

Some sort of integration of the sprint goal would be good. For example,

- when the sprint started, prompt an update in team central where the sprint goal is pre-populated

- display the sprint goal in table views for a quick overview

- a collective view of all the sprint goals

[Ari Romanenko]

Hi @Rachel Lin 
Just a quick note about our use case.
Advanced Roadmap allows creating a better hierarchy than with Epic only (which is too low level). It would be great if any Issue type can be selected to synch with Project here. 

[Andy Dunne]

Hi @Rachel Lin - any update on this feature? We have a use case for it and really keen to try it out. Cheers Andy.

[TotalPayne]

@Rachel Lin To add to some of the above comments/suggestions regarding customizing which issue type can be used for Jira synchronization, I was thinking about Jira Software versus Jira Work Management. My understanding is that most of the project templates (if not all) under the umbrella of Jira Work Management do not have an epic as a native issue type. It's obvious that the target market for Atlassian Teams is not exclusively employees who would use Jira Software but inclusive of all teams across an organization. Therefore, limiting the Jira integration to only the epic issue type could cause some frustration if one desires to facilitate organization-wide adoption of Atlassian tools for project management. 

I'd love to hear your or @Mary Raleigh's thoughts on this or any updates that may be pertinent. 

[Melissa Lyons]

Is there a Request ticket we can follow for Integration with Jira Epics?  Can't use the feature until that comes out, but eager to once it does!

[agileautonomy]

Hi @Rachel Lin ,

Being able to see which goals Jira issues (at any level especially ones created for Advanced roadmaps) contribute to would be great. It would allow us to create Advanced roadmap views corresponding to Goals.

[Tanya Boyer]

Has anyone been able to actually imbed an Advanced Roadmap into Atlas? When I paste the Plan URL, it doesnt give me the option to do the Embed, Card, Inline, URL etc options

[Rachel Lin]

@Tanya Boyer You might only be able to do this in the About fields of the Atlas project and not the update itself. Which field were you trying to paste it into? 

[Rachel Lin]

Hello everyone! Rachel from Atlas here 👋 I'm excited to let you all know that we've now released our Atlas for Jira Cloud integration, which site admins can now install on their Jira Cloud instances. 

To get an overview of the integration, read this announcement: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Atlas-articles/Announcing-the-Atlas-for-Jira-Cloud-integration/ba-p/2135451 

For detail on how to install and use the Atlas for Jira Cloud integration, learn more here: https://intercom.help/atlas-by-atlassian/en/articles/6474633-connect-your-atlas-projects-to-jira-epics 

Thank you everyone for your patience and feedback. We look forward to seeing you use this and let us know what you think ❤️

[Ákos Botos]

Hi @Rachel Lin

Great to see this in action! 

Please let us add the custom field to any issuetype. I would like to convince my company to use Atlas and Jira and leave Asana behind. To be able to do this it would be great if we could flexibly link Atlas projects and perhaps goals to issues added above Epic level.

When I mean flexibly I think of sometimes an Atlas project would be linked to a Saga other times to an Initiative or maybe an Epic.

Keep up the good work!

[Nick Dring]

Hi @Rachel Lin

Atlas looks very interesting but I have a question about how I could use it on our cloud site.

We currently have a small team of agents that service requests for our internal JSM.

Our colleagues authenticate using Atlassian Access but they only have access to the customer portal.

My question is would I be able to work with these 'portal only access users' in Atlas while using the free plan?

Regards

Nick

[Danno]

OK, I am done pulling my hair out with this. Where is this mysterious link to existing epics in Jira? It is supposed to be something called Where are we tracking the work? I've tried adding Jira projects to Atlas to no avail and have looked for settings, configuration etc. What am I missing?

[Antonio Valle (G2)]

Hi @Rachel Lin the integration looks great! I would propose as an enhancement that the block "Share updates about this piece of work" is enabled in other issue types than epics, since you can point to other issue types from the "Where is the work tracked?" field in Atlas and the smartlink magic happens! 

This would be great for the use case where we are doing elaborated portfolio tracking using a specific Jira project that represents the portfolio with different levels of hierarchy, even whitout using advanced roadmaps

[Rachel Lin]

Hi @Danno

To use the Atlas for Jira integration to link epics with Atlas projects, you'll need a site admin on your instance to install the Atlas for Jira app via the Atlassian Marketplace to the Jira site. 

Here's an article on how: https://intercom.help/atlas-by-atlassian/en/articles/6474633-connect-your-atlas-projects-to-jira-epics

Hope that helps!!

[Danno]

@Rachel Lin It appears that having installed the tool as a beta the linkage wasn't automatic. I reinstalled it while waiting for a reply and there it was.

Having the ability to link to more than one Epic in the Where are we tracking the work? would be a good addition.

[Luis Plaza]

Hi @Rachel Lin 

are there any plans to link Atlas to on premise located Jira issues using the application tunnels?

Regards

Luis